


metronome

by orphan_account



Series: likewise [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blanket Permission, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25844548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Heard Canada’s nice this time of year.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: likewise [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858870
Kudos: 3





	metronome

Sam leaves and it’s the end, the End with a capital E and punctuation and everything. Sam leaves him at a Greyhound bus station in Oklahoma, dead fields surrounding them, and Dean hands his brother a handful of twenties and says goodbye and it’s the hardest thing he's ever done in his life. 

Dad doesn’t say much, grabs a bottle and twists the cap off and takes a long gulp, doesn’t stop until morning. Dean doesn’t touch the booze, knows if he does he’ll say something, god knows what it is but it might even be an accusation, _why did you tell him to leave,_ or worse (he can picture himself calling Sam, three months later at a payphone in Ontario, trying to come up with something to say, failing, just letting the phone ring through and through until he hung up). 

It’s three days before Dad finds another hunt, a poltergeist up in Maine, by implicit agreement that they get as fucking far from California as physically possible. 

*

It’s a lighthouse haunting, where the doors shake and the sea moves at odd angles, a girl in a stained pink dress telling them, _mommy died and never came back_. Dad gives orders and not much else, sets them up for a hunt where you don’t have to think too much, where killing the murderous fucker takes your mind off of it all, and Dean appreciates it, but god help him, he’s still so damned _lost, has no clue what to do or say._

(Sam again: _no one in this fucking family ever says what they mean, it’s like you guys have some sort of code._ Dean had brushed him off at the time, rolled his eyes and grumbled, _thought you were smart, Sammy, Latin can’t be easier than English,_ and Sam had just looked at him like there were so many things that Dean didn’t understand, it was immeasurable. At the time Dean had thought he was crazy. He still kind of does, but these days Dean feels pretty nuts too.) 

(He thinks, vaguely, that he’s losing his mind. That Sam was his compass, somehow.) 

They finish the poltergeist, quick and easy, no thought to it. Dad disappears just as fast, leaves Dean standing at the edge of a rocky peninsula, cursing the Atlantic. He can’t find them, can’t find Dad and can’t reach Sam.

He does what he does best: he keeps going. 

*

Dean’s never left the country. Never been much reason to: passports are a bitch to falsify, not to mention the pain in the ass that is running credit card scams in places where you don’t know the lay of the land. At least, that’s what Dad used to say, when Dean wanted to hitch it up to Canada for a month or Sam wanted to see Mexico. 

But Dad’s not around anymore, and Dean is sick of America. He’s been to half the goddamn rest stops in the country, and every pie shop feels like the last, every motel room the exact same as the other. Coast to coast - it's is four million square miles of regret. 

So he pulls out Danny Roger's passport, and heads for the Great White North. 

*

The whole country is like someone took America and put it through the wrong color palette. Same wide roads, pie shops and gas stores and truck stops, Victorian houses and cracked streetlights. The whole time, he can’t help but feel out of place, like he’s looking for cornfields and all there ever is is trees and rocky Canadian shield. 

He leaves Quebec with a sigh, feeling more lost than ever. They speak French there, snubbed their noses at him for his English and crappy expressions of ' _uh, s’il te plait?'_ . Briefly, he wondered if he’d ended up on another continent; he couldn’t even take cases because he couldn’t read the goddamned newspapers.

He pulls into Ontario with a grim mindset, sure he’s gonna hate it, and he’s not entirely wrong: the people are colder here, they don’t talk as much. You make small talk in the park and people look at you like you’ve gone loony. The waitress serves him poutine with gravy and doesn’t even stick around when he asks her name, but maybe that’s for the best. He’s not sure he _wants_ a hookup right now, not sure if he even wants anything anymore. Sam’s left and there’s a hole in his heart, and Dad’s missing and who the hell knows if Dean even has enough of himself left to put back together. 

Three hours out of Toronto and the whole province is a depopulated wasteland: swamps and marshes and towering pine trees, stretches of rock the size of football fields, lakes to cover arenas, not a soul for miles. He skips rocks on the water and watches the sunset, absentmindedly kills mosquitoes and wonders what type of things live up here, if they've got the same monsters or worse. 

He doesn’t bother to find out, just fires off three rounds into a nearby tree, watches a whole seventeen birds fly out of the tree and into the night, blocking out the glimmering lights of the Milky Way.

He falls asleep staring at the stars, thinking of the times he and Sam used to sit on the roof of the Impala and count constellations. 

*

He used to have a roadmap in his room, back when he was four. It showed the entire world, connected by long stretches of asphalt. His mom would trace out different places to him, tell him about all the little trips she and Dad had been on, the time they went to Medicine Hat, the time they saw Yellowstone. 

When Dean was seven, he bought his own world map, a crappy ‘80s one with only the main interstates, the type that left the whole of Africa a complete blank. He kept it under his pillow, traced the lines in the dark. 

When Dean was nine Sam asked about it, asked him why he kept it, what on earth it meant. He was curious, even back then, had the most piercing eyes for a five-year-old. 

Dean had no answer, stood there blankly. Really, what _was_ he doing with a map of the world? His whole world could fit in the car.

Two days later, he threw the map out. 

*

The prairies fly by in a whirl, Manitoba bleeding into Saskatchewan and back again, and it feels like familiar ground, that same flyover state feeling, with wheat instead of cornfields. He even takes a few cases: ganks a ghost near Poplar River and kills a cow-loving variant of a chupacabra near Veregin. He plays pool at a bar and takes a girl home in Kamsack, and he doesn’t feel any different. 

*

He checks his voicemail the next day, rushes frantically when he realizes he’s got something new. 

It’s one word, a 650 area code. _“Dean-_ ” Sam says, sounding drunk as all hell, and then he hangs up. Dean stares, and almost drops his phone. 

*

The road ends at Alberta, where he finally decides that it’s enough, he’s gotta get back to it, hit the road, go _home,_ for whatever meaning that word might have. 

He drives by Banff, picks up a carton of to-go sushi and kills time by driving past Lake Louise, Lake Moraine. Mountains stretch up into the sky, silvery-blue lakes with mirror-perfect reflections, a castle-like hotel towering grandly in the distance. Tourists mill by, snapping pictures with their Canon cameras and chattering idly, and for a minute Dean is struck by this vicious envy, why the hell can't _he_ ever do anything like that, stay at a nice hotel with his family that doesn't entirely hate each other and not have to see a goddamned plethora of monsters every time he closes his eyes. 

That voice in his head, it sounds like Sam. 

The tourists pass him, and he shakes his head, palms his keys and hits the road, drives straight South. This country’s getting to him. 


End file.
